Review: Beyond UFOs by Jeffrey Bennett

THE first edition of George Gamow’s textbook The Constitution of Atomic Nuclei, published in 1931, was almost immediately rendered useless when the neutron was discovered in 1932. The second edition was running through the presses in 1936 when physicists worked out the structure of the compound nucleus, making that edition as obsolete as the first. Gamow agonised over whether he should risk firing a third bullet and finally, in 1947, he took the plunge. The third edition was duly published, but with a mischievous preface in which he claimed credit for any subsequent breakthroughs in the field. Just producing the book was, he wrote, a contribution to the progress of science. “Whenever a new edition of this book nears publication, a new major discovery is made in nuclear physics.”